Brussels wins support for further legal steps in dispute with Poland

European leaders warned Poland that the union was prepared to deploy further legal sanctions against Warsaw in response to its defiance of EU law, as they urged the country to walk back its challenges to the bloc’s judicial foundations.

In their first face-to-face talks since Poland’s top court ruled that key parts of EU law are not compatible with the country’s constitution, leaders voiced strong support for the European Commission’s pledge to hit back at Warsaw.

However, numerous leaders also called for political dialogue to be prioritised alongside legal measures, as they sought to ease a bitter row that has triggered fears that Poland could ultimately exit the union.

“There was a clear message from an overwhelming group of leaders around the table that we are highly worried about the situation in Poland,” Mark Rutte, Dutch prime minister, said after the summit adjourned on Thursday evening.

“Tonight was dialogue. But at the same time, there is a clear understanding we fully support the commission, in putting forward the necessary measures and reacting to what the Polish government is doing.”

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, was prominent in calling for a calming of aggressive rhetoric that has characterised the dispute. Arriving in Brussels on Thursday before the summit, she said member states needed to find ways to “come together again”.

EU member states voiced differing priorities as they consider how they should confront the Polish constitutional court ruling, a verdict considered a direct challenge to the union’s legal order.

The dispute, after five years of back and forth between Warsaw and Brussels over challenges to judicial independence by the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS), has raised questions over Poland’s future in the EU.

During a two-hour discussion on the rule of law on Thursday night, commission president Ursula von der Leyen reiterated that Brussels is weighing up using three tools in response to Warsaw’s behaviour.

These include a legal challenge, a mechanism that could reduce EU funding for Poland, and an extension to a sanctions process that could strip the country of its EU voting rights. The most important issue, the president stressed, was the threat to the independence of the judiciary in the country.

That approach was widely supported. “It was good that so many expressed themselves more or less along the lines of the president,” said one senior EU diplomat, adding: “We would have liked this group to be bigger, but it is the way it is.”

One EU official stressed that legal and institutional instruments were available and “could still be activated”, adding: “European Council members are convinced that the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary are absolutely fundamental.”

However, many leaders also expressed their willingness to pursue political dialogue. One Polish official briefed on the talks said that they “appreciate the fact that serious leaders try to understand the sensitivity of the situation”.

Asked to open the discussion on rule of law, Poland’s prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki told his fellow leaders that Warsaw’s dispute with Brussels was not about ignoring EU law but challenging what he believes are examples of the bloc’s institutions wielding powers over member states that they have not been granted.

While repeating many of his core arguments that Poland would not be “blackmailed” by the EU and that the commission had misinterpreted the Polish court’s ruling, he spoke in a far more conciliatory manner than in his belligerent speech to the European parliament on Tuesday, diplomats said.

Merkel said the Poland issue was a symptom of a broader problem on how member states view the EU and how much sovereignty they are willing to hand over. “That is certainly not just an issue between Poland and the EU, it is also being discussed in other member states,” she said ahead of the talks.

Her conciliatory tone was echoed by a number of other leaders. Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez said that while Poland needed to recognise the commission’s role as a guardian of the EU’s treaties, he was looking for a “constructive way to find a solution” to a very complex situation.

Charles Michel, the European Council president, said the EU needed to be “firm” on rule of law principles, but also that “we need to engage in dialogue so we can achieve positive results”.

The EU is far from united over what to do about Poland and there are also concerns over the respect of core EU principles in a number of member states, including Hungary and Slovenia.

Questions over the primacy of EU law have been raised in a number of other countries, including Germany, where the constitutional court last year ruled that the European Court of Justice had acted beyond its competences in a case related to bond-buying by the European Central Bank.

But Poland is the only country where the head of government has asked the constitutional court about the primacy of EU law.

The summit also focused on the recent surge in European energy prices, the diverging trends in Covid-19 cases between EU member states, and the outlook for Europe’s trade policy. It continues on Friday with a planned discussion on migration and digital policy.

Additional reporting by Guy Chazan in Berlin and Javier Espinoza in Brussels